Last weekend I went to Gifu to stay at Yurina’s family’s apartment. It was just Yurina and her sister, Junna there at the time. In the evening we saw the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie. The next day Yurina drove me a bit around Gifu city and went to fun Karaoke.

Here’s my review of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dean Man’s Chest:
I really liked the first one. The second one was ok. The third one is one of the worst movies ever made. The opening scene is ridiculously long and overdrawn, as is every other scene. In one scene of a meeting at a table, they take at least 10-15 mins to get to the conclusion that they have to vote for a new pirate king (wtf?!). Every scene has too much unneeded dialogue, that would make more sense in Japanese. Seriously, the Japanese subtitles said more than what was actually understandable in English in some scenes (like mumbling in the background). I recommend seeing a dubbed version (I didn’t see).

One major fault is failing to reintroduce the characters for those who haven`t seen the previous movies, or have forgotten the characters (like me). The plot seems mostly incoherant, and refers to scenes in previous movies. I realised that with the three movie titles, each movie in this trilogy relies on the previous movie to be understood, with each story getting more incoherant. “The Curse of the Black Pearl”; “Dead Man’s Chest”; “At World’s End”. One thing I definitely expected more of was romance. It was non-existant in this movie, and then suddenly a marriage in the middle of battle… wtf?!

The only slightly good action scene is the maelstrom finale. If Johnny Depp`s character wasn`t in the movie, I`d give this 0 stars. The best scene in the movie is when he daydreams onboard an empty boat. For that I give it 2. Two cheers for peanuts!

No, I’m not dead I just haven’t posted in a while…

Earlier this month I went to Osaka with Yurina (who lives in Gifu) and Kana (who lives in Kyoto). Unfortunately I was still a bit sick at the time but had tons of fun exploring various areas of Osaka.

Here’s a sunset from early this month. It was really windy.

On Friday night, Lloyd, his friend Chiho, and her friend Yurina went for dinner at a shabu shabu restaurant in Kanayama. Shabu shabu is thinly sliced quickly self-boiled meat. We had a great time, and as the girls didn’t want to drink, Lloyd and I had to drink the 700ml sake bottle ourselves (maybe 2/3 by me).

The other night I found out a really nice cocktail/shot combination - 2/3 midori with 1/3 baileys layered on top. Here’s some photos of the result, with a nice Japanese glass I bought last week.

Lately I’ve been spending much more time learning Japanese through my textbook/workbook Genki and browsing Japanese websites. The other day I bought a Kanji dictionary for my nintendo DS, which allows me to write kanji on the screen and it comes up with the definition - handy for translating advertisements in the subway (and cost 5 times less than getting a dedicated advanced electronic dictionary that allows handwritten input [I already have an electronic dictionary]).

Today I went to Higashiyama zoo with a Japanese friend, but I forgot my memory card so I was carrying my camera bag around for no reason all day (except the zoom lens came in handy when we went to the tower and to get a closer look at faraway animals). Maybe I should get a 500+mm lens for wildlife/sporting events…

The other weekend I went to Kobe for sightseeing and meeting a friend.

I had kobe beef, which was really good, but had a bit too much fat in it. The most interesting thing though was how they cooked it. Instead of cooking a whole slab on both sides and serving it (with the eater cutting it up as they eat), they cooked it very briefly on both sides, then cut it up into cubes while it was still rare on the inside. The cubes were then turned over such that all four sides were cooked. I think this method might be quicker, possibly more tasty, and generally much easier than the old fashioned Western way. Then again it was high quality beef and probably a pretty sharp knife.

I found more strange English in Kobe than in Nagoya.

There’s even Melborne in Kobe!

Here’s a slightly blurry picture of me

There’s more photos in the photo gallery.

Recently I’ve also been spending time browsing through Mixi, Japan’s equivalent of Myspace.

If you have a spare minute or so, check out super sumo!